IRS Scandal: Washington Post Awards Itself Four Pinocchios

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air makes a great bust here.Sunday, the Washington Post’s ZacharyGoldfarb and Kimberly Kinday triedto argue that one reason the IRS might have singled out Tea Party and otherconservative groups for paralyzing harassment in 2010 was due to a sudden surgein applications for a 501 (c)(4) tax-exempt status:

In early 2010, an Internal RevenueService team in Cincinnati began noticing a stream of applications from groupswith ­political-sounding names, setting in motion a dragnet aimed at­separating legitimate tax-exempt groups from those working to get candidateselected.

The IRS officials decided to singleout one type of political group for particular scrutiny. “These cases involvevarious local organizations in the Tea Party movement,” read one internal IRSe-mail sent at the time.

Even if that were true, the excuse would make no sense. But accordingto The Washington Post’s ownfactchecker, Glenn Kessler, it is not true. Monday, Kessler awarded the fullboat of four Pinocchios to Lois Lerner, the IRS director of the exemptorganizations division, for making thesame claim/excuse the Post did:

The targeting of groups began inearly 2010, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizen’s United wasannounced on Jan. 21. The ruling paved the way for political groups to applyunder a tax-exempt status known as 501(c)4. Most charities apply under 501(c)3,but under 501(c)4 nonprofit groups that engage in “social welfare” can alsoperform a limited amount of election activity.

At first glance, the InspectorGeneral’s report appears to show that the number of 501(c)(4) applicationsactually went down that year, from 1,751 in 2009 to 1,735.

But it turns out that these arefederal fiscal-year figures, meaning “2010” is actually Oct. 1, 2009 to Sept.30, 2010, so the “2010” year includes more than three months before the SupremeCourt decision was announced.